Yvonne Seale wrote for History Today back in 2016:
In May 1756, an elderly governess died in the household of the Duke and Duchess of Portland, and was quickly and quietly buried in the churchyard of St Margaret’s, Westminster. Elizabeth Elstob left behind no family and few mourners, just some rooms full of ‘books and dirtiness’, as one visitor described them. Yet Elizabeth was a pioneer of medieval studies in England; in her youth, she became the first person to publish a grammar of Old English written in modern English, and would have accomplished much more if not for the restrictions which 18th-century society placed on women’s scholarship.
Born in 1683 to a merchant family in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Elizabeth was orphaned at an early age. The stern uncle who raised her at Canterbury – Charles Elstob, a prebendary canon of the cathedral there – largely disdained female education, believing that ‘one tongue is enough for a woman’, but Elizabeth still learned Latin and French as a child. Later, through her Oxford-educated clergyman brother, William, the teenage Elizabeth gained an introduction to a small but enthusiastic circle of scholars who worked on Anglo-Saxon history and culture. […] She claimed that her childhood in the north of England and a familiarity with its dialects and accents made it easier for her to grasp the language quickly.
Her brother William had many academic contacts – he was one of the founding members of what would become the Society of Antiquaries of London – and this fact, coupled with sheer force of personality, gave Elizabeth access to scholarly circles which would otherwise have been closed to her. Brother and sister enthusiastically encouraged one another in their endeavours, and even taught Old English to their nine-year-old serving boy so that he could help to transcribe manuscripts. In 1708, Elizabeth made her first foray into publishing with an anonymous translation of French scholar Madeleine de Scudéry’s Essay on Glory. That same year, she also produced a transcript of the Latin Athanasian Creed and its Old English glosses from the tenth-century Salisbury Psalter; this work was included in the publication of another scholar, William Wotton, who clearly thought highly of her abilities. He was not alone in his assessment of her; the pioneering linguist and theologian, George Hickes, wrote in a letter that Elizabeth was ‘a credit to our country’ and also praised her ‘incredible industry’.
In 1709, Elizabeth produced her first major work: an edition of Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham’s tenth-century An English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St Gregory. This text, on the life of the pope who had sent Christian missionaries to England in 597, had been preached as a sermon in Anglo-Saxon churches. Elizabeth wanted the volume to be ‘as beautiful as possible’, no matter the cost, and the finished book contained a number of engravings, as well as an eight-page dedication to Queen Anne and a 60-page preface. […]
Elizabeth’s second major work was The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue (1715), the first such grammar not to be written in Latin. She prefaced this book with an ‘Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities,’ in which she bluntly dismissed those such as Jonathan Swift who found the ancient Germanic languages harsh and grating. Elizabeth did not see in them ‘any Hardness, but such as was necessary to afford Strength, like the Bones in a human Body, which yield it Firmness and Support’. Her ancestors, she concluded, ‘spoke as they fought, like Men’.
Despite her masculine characterisation of Anglo-Saxon, Elizabeth explicitly stated that she wrote in contemporary language so that other Englishwomen could engage with her work. However, she also found an overseas audience. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and a keen linguist, owned a copy of the Rudiments of Grammar. Jefferson used it to help him understand terms which he encountered in his legal studies, annotated it with his thoughts on spelling and pronunciation, and wrote that ‘the English student generally, and particularly the student of law’ would benefit from the study of Anglo-Saxon. […]
Elizabeth planned to follow the Rudiments of Grammar with another, incredibly ambitious endeavour – an edition of all of Ælfric’s so-called Catholic Homilies, a key collection of Old English sermons and saints’ lives. She laid the groundwork for this with an early 18th-century attempt at crowdfunding, publishing a pamphlet with the lengthy and pointed title, Some testimonies of learned men, in favour of the intended edition of the Saxon homilies, concerning the learning of the author of those homilies; and the advantages to be hoped for from an edition of them (1713). Elizabeth also went in person in 1714 to petition Robert Harley, earl of Oxford and Queen Anne’s Lord High Treasurer, for some funding to support her work, and was successful.
However, her plans to publish the Homilies had to be abandoned when her brother, who had never enjoyed good health, died in 1715. William’s death left Elizabeth without a home and with the mountain of debts that the siblings had incurred in financing their expensive publications.
She was never able to return to scholarship (insert diatribe about the immense loss to humanity caused by the age-old suppression of women’s talents). Click through for more details and images. And for those not particularly interested in pioneers of Old English studies, may I present tv.garden, where you can watch TV stations from Afghanistan to Yemen (what, no Zimbabwe?); I am abashed to report that I would be completely unable to recognize Armenian from listening to it.
Thank you! I’m a medievalist with a focus on England, I’ve always been interested in our ‘foremothers’, and still I hadn’t heard of Elstob, so I am very grateful for this information.
Great, I’m glad I posted it!
Note the similar radio.garden, e.g.,
https://radio.garden/visit/washington-dc/DIlWBUQt
“Elstob” is an odd name. The most forthcoming website I could find on the subject vaguely suggests that it comes from the place “Elston” (as the family seems to have done), which seems implausible.
https://www.houseofnames.com/uk/elstob-family-crest
(But then, it seems quite likely that my own name comes from a place called “Haversedge.” Nottinghamshire folk scorn effete southern concepts like “clear enunciation.”)
“Elstob” is an odd name.
I was just thinking the same thing, so I’m glad you looked into it, even if there are no satisfactory results.
It’s obviously a pseudonym created by spelling “Botsle” backwards.
Well, as a genealogist, I have a loathing for websites that promise you *your* crest based on your surname, as if (1) everyone had a crest and (2) everyone with the same surname had the same crest. Their “research” is generally shoddy to nonexistent, and I don’t imagine the case to be much different with that site.
Forebears.io quotes a few different books on onomastics—”A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames” (1896) by Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley, “Surnames of the United Kingdom” (1912) by Henry Harrison, and “Patronymica Britannica” (1860) by Mark Antony Lower—all of which suggest that the name is from the village of Elstob, part of the parish of Great Stainton, not Elston.
There’s a lovely website “Survey of English Place-Names”, with the historical forms of the name Elstob, as well as an etymology, quote:
‘Elder-tree stump’, OE ellern + stobb. According to Surtees III 46 Mrs Elizabeth Elstob, the famous Anglo-Saxon scholar, had seen a charter of 1304 in the family archives at Foxton whereby one Adam de Elnestobbe made a grant land there to the Knights Templar. The 1480, 1498 and 1512 IPM forms relate to the manor of Thomas Midilton of Silksworth; according to VCH III 346 the identification is correct, but there is an Elstob Ho in Tunstall nr Silksworth.
https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/Durham/Great+Stainton/532853b3b47fc40a3800049c-Elstob
It appears:
IPM = “Durham, Cursitor’s Records: Inquisitions Post Mortem etc. Appendix to 44th and 45th reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Records”
VCH = “Victoria History of the Counties of England” (commonly, “Victoria County History”) which stands at 230+ volumes
Surtees = “The History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham” (3 vol.) by Robert Surtees
Looks much more convincing – thanks.
I’d figured a distant relation to the Garridebs.
@David E.: That website is confusing*, but it does tell of a small township named Elstob in the parish of Stainton, County Durham”. Since Elizabeth was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, that seems like the obvious origin of her name. Google Maps finds it here.
The etymology of that toponym is given as ellern-stobb, I.e. “alder stump”. Elizabeth herself is cited.
* I have no idea why it conflates Elston and Elstob.
Edit: One day I’ll learn to reload before posting.
254 Elstobs here, including the Elizabeth Elstob in question:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/search?firstname=&middlename=&lastname=ELSTOB&birthyear=&birthyearfilter=&deathyear=&deathyearfilter=&location=&locationId=&bio=&linkedToName=&plot=&memorialid=&mcid=&datefilter=&orderby=r&page=1#sr-115232700
It’s obviously a pseudonym created by spelling “Botsle” backwards.
In the same spirit, we have gnip gnop.
But then again, alder trunk is a rather unusual toponym. It would stand less our as a byname for a person or perhaps a heraldic family name. Could a small township like that simply take the name of an owner or tenant?
The Kusaasiland toponym “Tilli” actually means “tree trunk.”
(But then, every other place name in those parts seems to have something to do with trees.)
I was lucky – the very first word I got to hear happened to end in [kʰ]… a few more [t͡skʰ] and [ɛŋkʰ] later (which appeared in the next few seconds) I might have figured it out.
> alder trunk is a rather unusual toponym
Particularly since an alder is a tree of wet soil, making i tunlikely as the central point of a village, and a coppice tree, so the stump phase is evanescent.
Was it a metaphor — a village that had been burned or razed by invaders, but then grew back?
I thought I had come across the name before, but it turned out to be only as the surname of a character in the Chalet School books. (Yes, this is the kind of thing that sticks in my mind…)
Elinor Brent-Dyer was from the north-east somewhere, though, so that fits.
“Alder” as the first element of a compound is pretty common, both in Britain and in Scandinavia. It’s the second element that’s odd. Usually, the second element describes the site in generic terms and the first describes it more specifically (“Which stub?” “The alder stub”). So how could stub be a generic descriptive element. There’s hardly any topography there, just flat. Maybe it was used in the meaning “cut-off piece (of some larger entity)”? Or maybe it locally meant “area of stubs, cleared land”?
Just a note… As Craig mentions above, the page for Elstob at the the Survey of English Place-Names site, linked to above, gives the etymology as ‘elder-tree stump’, OE ellern + stobb, with Old English ellen, ellern, etc., ‘elder (Sambucus nigra)’, not alor ‘alder (Alnus)’. Perhaps of note for the meaning ‘elder’ in Elstob is the form reported by Elizabeth Elstob from a document of 1304 in her family’s archives, Elnestobbe, with -n-. However, A.D. Mills, A Dictionary of British Place Names, also has some northern names with an element eller- as ‘alder’, from Norse:
Alder goes with German Erle and the rather protean group of Old Norse elri, elrir, alri, ǫlr. Pfeifer on this family here. (Also, Pfeifer on the family of German Holunder, Swedish, Norwegian hyll, Danish hyld ‘elder’, etc., here.) I guess English elder goes with some Middle Low German forms: ellern, elderne, elhorn, alhorn. Pokorny on OE ellen, ellern here. Beyond that it seems murky. I cannot look into this question of the El- in Elstob and elders and alders right now, because of the Eid holiday. Maybe someone else can follow up—this seems like a topic on which there must be a more recent study.
For the ‘stub’ part, a corresponding element “crompán” is not unusual in Irish place names. However, this word also means (I suspect this is the usual meaning in place names) “creek” or “low-lying land next to a creek or stream”. I have no idea whether there might be a similar extended meaning in English place names.
‘elder-tree stump’ […] not alor ‘alder (Alnus)’
Man, English can be an annoying language.
@Xerib: Elder, alder. I’ll admit to being confused, but I think it’s likely that so were the written sources. The words must have been mixed up in this area of Norse influence.
@PP: There is a beck running nearby — as must be true for just about any settlement in this area — but you could also say that the whole plain is one big “low-lying land next to a creek or stream”, so it’s certainly a kind of meaning we would be looking for.
However, if I get the connotations of Irish crompán right, it’s about shelter from wind, and the low-lying and the closeness to water follows from that. That’s not fitting at all here in the middle of a large plain. If it’s derived from crom “bend”, the double meaning would be similar to Eng. hook or Norw. krok. A certain road I find in Waterford seems to support that. Not that Irish was suggested as the origin for -stob, but the parallel for the colexification “stub” ~ “low-lying land” is less convincing.
But “shelter” had me thinking. Groves or groups of trees must have been attractive as shelters on the open plain. A meaning “remaining piece of woodland, small grove” would also make the metaphor less metaphorical — just an extension from “stub of a tree” to “stub of a forest”. But without parallels elsewhere this is just speculation.
because of the Eid holiday
Bareka nɛ Di’ema, yanam Zupibig dim wʋsa banɛ an Mɔɔm la!
(Or tomorrow, depending.)
Maybe it was the name of a homestead first and became a placename only later? In that case it makes sense for it to be named for the stump of a remarkable elder tree.
There are lots of elder tree stumps around here. I’ve yet to meet anyone carrying their name, but visible from my study window is Alna, right across the river.
“ Originally a part of old Pownalborough, the town was settled around 1760 and incorporated in 1794 by the Massachusetts General Court as New Milford. But residents did not like the name, so it was changed in 1811 to Alna, Latin for alder, the tree which grows in profusion along the banks of the Sheepscot River.”